Race Director responds to DEENA incident

? wrote:

The thing I found disturbing is 72 comp requestd. Who are all these people requesting to be comped for a local road race?!

?,

You raise an interesting question. Which is not surprising given that your name is question. But you fail to answer you question with the obvious response, namely, that this is a sign that runners are all greedy bastards, and have this sense of entitlement that is hurting the sport, and how we as a society are on the decline because we're cheap, self-serving bastards.

Just run with it. Go with the flow. Don't be afraid to make gross generalizations based on no evidence.

dfsdfsgfg wrote:

Don't be afraid to make gross generalizations based on no evidence.

I am really not sure what to take away from your post. I, like others on this board, know a handful of top flight runners. Most of them have never felt the should be comped into a race just based on the fact that they are(or were) fast. When offered that (and/or housing, flights, etc) and it fit into their plan they where appreciative. I do know runners who have a sense of entitlement, but then again I know non-runners like that.

Here's my take. I really like Deena and I hope she uses this situation to refine her character. We have all made poor judgement decisions and I hope she responds appropriately. She has been someone we have all admired.

It's just not fun. It's not funny.

Still not sure why she even wants to run this race. Should could win the open race outright. The Masters Race is the drawing card. What a huge deal has been made out of a really stupid subject.

the real issue wrote:

OMG wrote:

This thread will only get about 10 responses because it's not as fun. Still doesn't sounds like he offered a comp.

Mitch is a class act. How did Deena respond to this? She crossed him off publicly in her blog.

She should. He's a dolt if Deena Kastor's name can slip by him.

chauvinist wrote:

Don't give the RD a hard time because he doesn't recognize the name Deena Kastor. Most men don't really pay attention to women's running unless they're looking for eye candy.

Then in that case he should have recognized her name.

Get real wrote:

Deena made a fair request, the RD made a fair rejection. It should have ended right there, but Deena pulled a Slaney by taking this public on her blog, bringing her smack into the middle of a storm. The request and the rejection were both appropriate. Deena's response was not.

Dense aren't we? Did she call the local newspaper to complain? No. She put it on her blog.

yet again wrote:

mobile9 wrote:

Kinda says something that the RD of a fairly well known races has never heard of Deena Kastor.

Well it didn't take long for some joker to chime in with the next criticism.

Actually it says nothing whatsoever except in your head.

Actually it does say something and maybe, if you didn't have your head up your ass, you'd see what I was getting at.

Someone on here said that this guy had his head around port-a-potties, water stations, etc, and wouldn't be concerned with quality racers like Deena. That is indicitave over where road racing, perhpas the healthiest aspect of our sport, is and where it's going. These are not so much races as they are participatory events. Quality competition isn't a concern because the race officials (maybe the general public, too) don't care about it and it doesn't bring in revenue.

Maybe that's why a seemingly nice guy who doesn't know anything about racing is running a major 10k.

just pay the fee and be done.. all athletes should pay the $ out of respect. thats all. whats a couple of bucks when burgers in the states are like 99 cents.

I'm glad the guy has his head around porta-potties and waterstops. That's where it should be.

And yes, they are participatory events and that's great.

And no, not many runners period, know who any elite runner is, because even in the olympic years, you have to look on page 10X to find anything written about them...and that's OK.

I'm suprised anybody would volunteer to be a race director and i was one for 10 years..never again-ha.

They will never believe the amount of scrutiny that'll come their way for VOLUNTEERING to do good for something.

I know many 70-80 mile week runners who aren't overly familiar with the elites.

They never run all that much and again, you'd better be able to find em on page 10X or be able to scour the internet.....

It's all OK.

? wrote:

The thing I found disturbing is 72 comp requestd. Who are all these people requesting to be comped for a local road race?!

This is a race on the PAUSATF circuit. The top 15 runners in the point standings from both open divisions (male and female) from the previous year are all automatically comped in all the current years PAUSATF races. I believe that the top 10 masters in both divisions (male and female) are all comped as well. Though each of these athletes is guaranteed a comp, they still have to specifically request it for each race. Thats 50 comp requests right there. Then there are at least another 10-20 other studs (both male and female) on the circuit who didn't run enough races to be top 15 in the standings, but are just as fast if not faster than the comped athletes. Most of these runners will also request a comp.

Though Paso is "just a local race", the PAUSATF circuit is a very large and very competitive series. There are probably 10-15 Olympic Trials qualifiers, and numerous former All-Americans who race these races regularly. The last race was a 5K which was won in 14:19 with 25+ runners under 16 minutes on a hilly course in San Francisco.

Any PA race will automatically attract 100-200 very competitive runners. Which makes this whole decision by the RD unusual - this race won't just be full of soccer moms and joe joggers, a large cross section of the potential participants are fans of the sport who take there running very seriously. Deena's presence would have been a huge draw for these people. Oh well we all make mistakes.

Thanks for the info.

So....... what is the big deal here? A runner asked for a comp and get declined. When you ask for something, the result can be approved or declined. She just got the answer she do not want to hear and that's it. She put that on her personal BLOG. Nothing wrong with that - she want to provide reason for not running that race.

Again, who is Denna anyway?

If the RD did not recognize the name at the time, how would you expect the general public know her? Thus her participation would not be much value to the race - other than some of the LR nuts who have plenty of time at hand to kill by following elite runners around and happens to remember the name Deena and brag about it here.

AN ANALOGY:

Let's say a famous celebrity and her husband want to spend a romantic weekend in wine country. Then one or both of them see that a local charity is holding a fundraising event. Hey, let's offer to grace their event with our presence in exchange for them paying our expenses for our romantic weekend. We get to have our cake and eat it too.

(I imagine the situation with Deena went down something like that. Whether you approve of that or not is your call.)

Jefe in the CO wrote:

I just went back and read a few pages of the original post after reading this and all I can say is "Wow!" I mean I've read some crazy sh!t on this message board over the years but this one takes the cake.

How out of touch can Malmo, MAYERHOFF, Rippy cripply, et. al., be? If a runner with the accomplishments and professional demeanor of Deena wants to be in your race you should be falling all over yourself to make sure she doesn't lift a finger to get there and compete.

Jefe,

I have to disagree with you on this one. Over the last few years, large races in West Virginia, Ohio, and New York that I have run in have steered away from spending the money for the top level athletes. They have found that that money DOES NOT increase participation in their races.

They have found that money can be better used to attract more runners by using it locally. If you look at the races website, their emphasis is more on raising money for charities than bringing in top athletes to run fast times. They are still doing that on the masters level, but because of their location and the abundance of top masters in the California area, very few top masters are from out of state.

While us competitive runners are enamored with the elite runners(I have went to many races to listen to an elite runner speak the night before), the masses are more interested in other aspects such as fitness, comraderie, and fundraising.

I would say that these 2 threads are fairly indicative of the people in a mass participation race that know who the Hell Deena is. It is about 50-50. But this only represents the people that know who she is. There is another 50% of the field that never heard of Deena.

Now what you have to understand is that Deena is now about as popular as President Bush Half the people don't give a shit. Of the 50% remaining, half (25% of the field) strongly disagree with her and the other 25% feel she was mistreated. That gives her a 25% approval rating. Her actions, whether you agree with her or not, took a huge hit over this.

For those that are defending her. If she is so right then why remove it from her blog?

I really don't believe those of us who think Deena was wrong will hold it against her. Most of us are just giving our opinion on her action, not on her life as a whole. It is obvious she realized her action was at least perceived as wrong and dealt with it appropriately.

Actually, Mitch gives out almost no comps to the masters portion of the race (I believe he comps the overall M and F winner from the previous year). I know he turned down my comp request when I asked a couple years back (and I was definitely "top 10").

Three things:

1) Mitch is a bigwig at a bank putting on a great race in Paso Robles and running it like a pro. No one who participates in the race ever complains about the actual running of the race. If Mitch doesn't know Deena the runner from Dino the Flinstones' pet dinosaur, who cares? That's not his job. He puts on a great race. Would it be nice if everyone knew all the top distance runners? Yes. But that's not how it is. Deal.

2) Deena's a great runner and a class act. This incident means nothing when it comes to evaluating her character. If you think it does, you should evaluate your own character. Good lord, do any of you have lives?

3) Here's my only personal gripe with Mitch: he continues to refer to Eddy Hellebuych's 29:08 (or whatever it was) winning time from a few years back as if it's something to be proud of - when we runners (especially masters runners) know that it's a stain upon the sport (Eddy was busted a few short months after setting this and a few other American masters records). Mitch knows Eddy was found guilty (there was a big to-do the next year when Eddy competed as he awaited his hearing), but he still hasn't grasped how disrespectful it is to masters runners to have Eddy's performance held up as a prize moment in the race's history. However, whenever that starts to bug me too much, I refer back to #1 (see above).

Okay, hope to see some of you in Paso tomorrow! (Where I'll be competing again even though Mitch made me pay.)